criminal: pass it on

[foxtongue]

Via Jake Applebaum: BART Police (in Oakland) murdered a man on NYE.

It appears that police in Oakland shot and killed a man on New Years Eve. He was apparently involved in a fight on BART but this is unclear as things quickly spiraled out of control. The police pulled him and several other people off of the train.

(If you know more information about the officers involved, please consider leaking their photographs, names and badge numbers to wikileaks.)

There was an SF Gate story on the incident. The story (for those who aren't reading the link) details what the witnesses saw. In short, a man was shot and it was said he was shot in the back, while on the ground. The comments on the story are horrible, most of them directly side with the police and suggest that all of the witnesses were lying. Some of the comments are simply racist and many suggest this is what you get for having a fight in public. While I certainly found it doubtful that the police would murder someone or even shoot them in the back (especially in such a crowd) it's pretty clear that this is what happened.

At least two people took videos of the shooting and one of them had a direct line of sight. You can clearly see that the victim is talking to the police. He raises his hands as any reasonable person would, especially when dealing with the police. This is I would expect someone to comply, to show that they don't have a weapon and that they mean no harm. The police put him on his stomach. This was with multiple police officers handling him.

He was reported to have begged to not be tasered. Supposedly he said that he had a four year old daughter right before he was put on the ground. The police officer in the video is clearly not at risk of any serious violence. Another police officer was holding the victim down. He had time to think and his response was to pull his gun, stand up, wait, aim and then he fired a shot directly into his back.

Here's a link to the video.

Someone in the comments of his post also noted that "Vargas (the filmer w/ the video camera) claims that she resisted police attempts to confiscate her camera."

Comments

[kylecassidy.livejournal.com]

sweet barking cheese.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked it's not getting more press, especially after the riots in Greece.

[rednfiery.livejournal.com]

it's getting a ton of press here in the bay area.

imo, the most "shocking" thing about it is that someone was able to catch (oakland area) police bad behaviour towards african-americans on video without it being confiscated or destroyed.

[velveteen.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I give BART cops enough credit to accuse them of deliberate murder. It looks to me like Jerkface was ready to pull his gun and stick it in some young turk's face to scare him when it went off accidentally. That'll happen when you're standing in a pile of people.

I'm interested in seeing how this all turns out.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Pulling a gun to scare someone when you're an officer of the law, especially when said someone is lying on the ground, pacified... There's no excuse. None.

[velveteen.livejournal.com]

By all means, an attempt to explain the situation - not to excuse it.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

I don't know. That looks like some cold-blooded murder to me. Yikes.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I wonder, you know? We had a similar incident here at the airport, with the taser, and nothing really came from it.

[mjtheanarchist.livejournal.com]

Dear god I fucking hate cops. The only people I hate more than them are the mother fucking murderers in the military. They can all rot in hell.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I just wish there wasn't a moratorium on smart police.